2.28.2019

We ended up getting about 4-5" of snow from this latest storm.  Enough that Jim had to go out this afternoon and use the snowblower to clear the driveway.  We'll see what March weather has in store but I peeked ahead and we are forecast for 6-10" of snow on Sunday!

When he wasn't tending to the driveway, Jim spent his time in the metal shop, continuing to work on drilling holes.  He now has all the bolt holes done in the clip angle pieces.

These pieces will act like big washers to give support to the area where the support arms will connect to the posts.  He got all those holes drilled...

He also reset up the metal bandsaw to start cutting the ends of the support arms - putting this little cut for aesthetics but also so that there are no sharp edges.

Since it's the end of the month, after a crazy, long and extremely cold winter, Jim decided to investigate how much gas we've used.  That in itself wasn't easy - he used the snowblower on the upper driveway as well, but there was absolutely no indication of where the tank is buried underneath all the snow.  Plus, since we had the ice issues, there is a thick crust of ice on top.  Jim had to take a shovel and break through the ice and try to dig to the cover of the tank - it was under at least a foot of snow.  Once he got it unburied, he was able to read the gauge.

Then an explanation of our gas usage...my smart husband has been keeping daily track of the furnace usage with the Nest thermostat app.  He plots the number of hours the furnace runs (the orange area below) as well as the average daily temperature (the blue line).  It's very predictable - as the weather gets colder, the furnace runs longer.

But then Jim was curious to see if he could make a predictive model to estimate the number of gallons of propane we've used.  We had the readings from when we installed the tank and again when we filled it up.  His model estimated that we should have 490 gallons of propane left.

When he finally was able to get to the gauge to read it - it showed we had 490 gallons left - amazing! Well...not really from my uber-smart husband!

So that was comforting.  We now know that we have plenty of propane left to take us through fall probably.  While we figured we would have enough, it's kind of like continuing to drive when you can't see your fuel gauge!

High 24/Low 6 - 4-5" of snow